Reading around on ‘shadow organisations’, I stumbled across an essay by a consultant called Bill Critchley entitled “The Role of the Change Agent. [pdf]”
This bit struck my eye

Self-Organisation and Emergence
Before I understood a little about complexity theory, I knew from my experience of ‘facilitating’ management groups, that in certain conditions, if I left the group with sufficient space, they would organise themselves perfectly well to do whatever it was that needed to be done, often in a lively and creative way, usually redefining the task I had suggested to them. Conversely I also knew that if I ‘managed’ or controlled the group too much, it would become comparatively quiet, and I would feel that I had to energise it, to drive it forward, usually ending up with the outcome I wanted but with the group in a mood of either passive compliance or latent hostility. When the group ‘self-organised itself an outcome ‘emerged’. The difficulty for me was that it was not what I expected, while the group members felt enlivened by the process, and had a high degree of ownership of the outcome. Intuitively I knew that what had emerged was more innovative and relevant than what I had intended, even though we might be faced with some difficulties in having it accepted by other managers not present at the meeting.
I was learning to be less controlling in my consulting in order to allow the relevant issues to emerge and to be worked with. I noticed that when I allowed this self- organising process to develop, in time I could participate in the dialogue, contributing my experience and external perspective without over influencing the process, without resuming control. Now, a difficult questions presents itself; how do I create the conditions in which this self-organising can occur?

That ought to be called the “dilemma of the facilitator.” If he were fair to us, he would admit that letting people self-organize goes against the expectations of those who pay him. How goes the old saw? If your job depends on your not understanding something, you won’t understand it.